COVID-19 vaccine expected in India in early 2021 from more than one source: Harsh Vardhan

Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Tuesday that India is expecting to receive coronavirus vaccine from more than one source in early 2021. Harsh Vardhan said that the expert groups are formulating strategies to plan the distribution of coronavirus vaccine in the country.

Harsh Vardhan, at a Group of Ministers meeting, said, "We're expecting that early next year we should have the vaccine in the country from maybe more than one source. Our expert groups are formulating strategies to plan on how to roll out the distribution of the vaccine in the country."

Harsh Vardhan's remarks on the availability of coronavirus vaccine in India and its distribution in the country has come a day after the World Health Organization (WHO) said it believes a coronavirus vaccine would be ready for registration by December 2020 or early next year at the earliest.

A WHO chief scientist said on Monday that the organization expects that



coronavirus vaccine would be ready for registration by the end of 2020.

Speaking to media, WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said 40 coronavirus vaccine candidates are in some stage of clinical trials, and 10 of them are in the phase three trials which, she said, "tells us about both the efficacy and the safety".

"...So, the best we could make a guess or predict, looking at when a trial started and when it is likely to have enough data to submit to the regulators, is earliest from December of 2020 into the early part of 2021," the WHO scientist was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

While many countries have scrambled to develop a coronavirus vaccine, none of them have passed the WHO-approved phase 3 trials so far. Many coronavirus vaccine candidates are likely to be registered with the WHO by the end of the year and as Health Minister Harsh Vardhan has said, a coronavirus vaccine may be available in India in early 2021.